Summary: Chaos Rising, the upcoming standalone expansion pack for Dawn of War II will introduce players to the Chaos Space Marines and their malevolent deities. We got hands-on with the new faction and the latest updates for the game. Read Full Article

Would far rather have had more a more robust campaign for the original races than an extension of anything related to the Space Marines, Chaos or not. Its what the original game suffered from to start with.

However, it does look entertaining and new units around the board are always nice. Not sure if thats 30 dollar nice though.

can't wait for this!!!!! DoW2 has some of the best MP out there IMO. Relic is doing an awesome job for the community, the new units for each race are going to be provided for FREE to existing owners??? and the maps???? and free for all MP???? wow, just wow! wish other developers supported their communities like Relic.

What's stupid to me is, you don't even play as Chaos in the campaign... you play as Corny ass space marines and you're allowed to corrupt them or not by joining forces with the "dark side". The problem is they do nothing but focus on SPACE MARINES it's dumb how much favoritism they have for one race.. I'd like to play as orcs in the campaign as well, thanks to it being space marines I still have yet till this day to play the campaign.

Secondly, they better balance the races out this time... they completely ruined Dawn of War 2 with extreme balancing issues, Space Marines are ridiculously over powered (cool more favoritism), Eldar is 2nd in being ridiculous. Then it goes down hill from there with.. Tyranids, then Orcs being on the bottom of the races.

It upsets me a lot that they are losing players due to imbalance issues, and just overall unneeded complications like using Windows Live ruining the online PC steam community. Doesn't even make sense to have windows live when steam is the exact same thing but a thousand times better & faster, esp. when the game is on steam.

If I see no nerfs to Space Marines and no buffs to certain races, then see Chaos being extremely over powered which is likely seeing THQ's path lately. Then I'm done with the franchise, the 40K MMO isn't even worth it if they can't balance the most simplest things in a strategy game, & the First Warhammer was amazing. I'm very disappointed as it stands.

I don't totally disagree with you. Balancing issues are somewhat unforgivable especially this far after launch. It would be nice to see the addition of other race single player campaigns. Get used to the favoritism though, Games Workshop is all about the Space Marines and they are their most recognizable force. I love Space Marines personally but I would rather see someone like the Space Wolves (though some people find them cheesy) instead of the Blood Ravens..

The Space Marines in DoW are lacking a lot in terms of dialog and character, they are not just unthinking puritanical killing machines (that would be Inquisitional forces). The campaign in subsequent games needs to be more involved and have better, more fleshed out characters.

About the 40k MMO, it isn't being made by Relic so you don't have to worry about them not fixing the balance in that game, though I have my doubts on the quality of the MMO until I actually get my hands on it. Hopefully they will do the right thing and make Space Marines unavailable as a playable character. Space Marines are superhuman powerful with the best weapons the Imperium has to offer, no way the player should control that, it would lessen their impact. Hopefully it will be centered around Inquistor retinues or some such.

That's the main reason why I don't touch DoW multiplayer, balance is not there. As for the MMO, they've already stated that you'll be able be a space Marine, but from the interviews it sounds like you start out as a iniate and have to work your way up from a leveling system and a honor system if you want rank ups beyond brother.

Where was it ever said you can be a SM in the MMO? I thought I have seen everything released about the MMO and I have never seen any info about what playable classes and such would be available. Starting out as an initiate doesn't make sense either as they would be training the whole time on the Chapter's homeworld or home base in the case of some Chapters like the Dark Angels.

I just don't see why they would allow a player to be a SM. Why let someone be a character that could take on whole squads of lesser foes by themselves? Like I said earlier there is so much more they could do with Inquisitional warbands, just look at the pen and paper RPG Dark Heresy. This would allow for the more traditional class archetypes in the game as well.

I see Space Marines like I viewed Jedi in SWG. They will be extremely limited in number and people will whine that they can't be the uber cool class and then they will make them a lot weaker but available to everyone so that there is nothing special to them. Imperial Space Marines, just like Jedi, don't deserve this.

I like DoW2, but I really wish the MP portion of the game was designed more similar to Company of Heroes with base building and a higher unit cap. MP games always feel more like small skirmishes than full scale war like in the original DoW. Other than that, looking forward to the expansion.

I really wish they had made the campaign mode and the MP / Skirmish mode play more similarly. I understand the desire to tie upgrades to progression for the campaign and the need to make them immediately purchasable in MP mode, but I think they could have done a better job blending them so that the game didnt feel so alien. If I hadnt played the original DoW I would have had no clue what I was doing when I started playing MP in DoW II.

The more I play skirmish the less interest I have in this expansion.. (and Im a table table top Chaos player who loved the first DoW.) Multiplayer is really horrible in DoW II. It effing sucks.. and since that is the only way to even get to play chaos, I'm over this xpac before it hits the shelves. I hope SC II is better.